Tri-Pro Forest Products has recently closed its Orofino mill due to a lack in cedar logs. The operations were curtailed in Tuesday in Clearwater County and left 40 people unemployed.
"Over the last few weeks, we have only been able to run the mill a couple or three days a week, and we just can't survive that," Resource Manager Mike Boeck said.
According to Lewiston Morning Tribune, Tri-Pro purchased 3 million to 4 million board feet of cedar from a salvage sale after the 2014 Johnson Bar Fire along the lower Selway River. Boeck said that would have provided the bulk of what was needed to keep the Orofino mill running for another six months.
Yet, the litigation initiated by Friends of the Clearwater and Idaho Rivers United against the U.S. Forest Service stopped the transaction. Even if Tri-Pro got its hands on some cedar from state sales, small landowners and industrial suppliers, the supply wasn’t enough.
"It's not that there's a lack of resource," Boeck said. "It's that it gets tied up in litigation. These environmental groups have pretty much devastated our industry over the years. This isn't a new problem."
Gary Macfarlane, ecosystem defense director with Friends of the Clearwater in Moscow, said bidders on the sale knew it was facing a legal challenge, as reported by the Lewiston Morning Tribune.
"We won in the court of law because the sale was illegal," Macfarlane said. "... These are national forests. They do not belong to the lumber industry. They belong to all Americans."
No information was given by Boeck or Tri-Pro officials regarding whether the equipment or property it has in Orofino will be sold. Yet, the plant in Oldtown, Idaho won’t be affected by these problems, as the mill will go on with its operations using cedar logs from Canada and other local mills.
"A lot of it is the long-term struggles of the logging and wood products industry between technology, competition from abroad, including Canada, and resource supply issues, that sector has decreased considerably," Tacke said.
Tri-Pro was Clearwater County's second largest manufacturer behind Nightforce, which produces rifle scopes.
